Look familiar? To the plugged-in it should. Asking $5,900,000 a year ago and briefly in contract soon thereafter (“$5.4 is the number I hear“), the list price for 299 Santa Paula Avenue was reduced down to $5,249,000 before being withdrawn this past January.
Back on the MLS with an official “one day” on the market and a new “original list price” of $4,950,000 (16 percent under its original original list price) for the nearly 11,000 square foot (and still muy sweet) home.
∙ Listing: 299 Santa Paula Avenue (5/5.5) – $4,950,000 [MLS]
∙ Mi Casa Es…Muy Sweet (And Large): 299 Santa Paula Avenue [SocketSite]
∙ Oh Santa, You Shouldn’t Have! (299 Santa Paula Avenue Cuts) [SocketSite]
Ah, the old “it’s in contract, but we’re accepting back up offers” trick.
Doesn’t really work any longer, but nice try.
It’s almost as much fun as the “It’s a 6-30 unit condo building and the first two to four units went fast for a sky high price (to the, cough, cough, developer or an untraceable relative) so I guess the comps are very high for this building so you should pay nearly a sky high price and you’ll be getting a deal” trick that now pretty much appears standard for new infill developments.
Are you sure that last year’s episode was a trick? I don’t recall multiple back-ups being reported. It is not unreasonable that a legit $5.4M offer was made and then fell through for any number of reasons.
I don’t doubt that the “phantom offer” trick has been used in the past. And don’t be so sure that trick doesn’t work anymore. Every month a new batch of buyers appears on market and there’s always a chance that one or more will fall for a phantom offer of bogus comp trick.
Tipster is sure of nothing he ever says. Be sure of that. The great efforts he takes to make this board think that he’s seen it all a million times is impressive, tho.
That’s a bold statement, anonn. Prove it.
OK. Take the statement in this thread and the faux world weary way he said it. He can’t be sure there wasn’t an offer but he said it anyway. So there’s that. Ha. Maybe think about what you’re arguing over once in a while before you start arguing, lol. Just a suggestion.
$9000.00 in hoa fees what for?
From the “Remarks” section of the MLS listing:
I’m a huge movie buff, especially for films set in The City; went out of my way to see “Medicine for Melancholy” in 2008, but I’d never heard of this film.
Just by happenstance the L.A. Times had an article on the movie today. The “money ‘graph”:
It’s scary, to me at least, that I knew right away that Benjamin Bratt is the former beau of Julia Roberts. I guess I spend too much time in supermarket checkout lines.
The HOA thing has me curious as well. Do SFRs often have their very own HOA? Sure, this place is big enough for its own zip code, but I haven’t noticed this sort of thing before.
Anybody?
Beuller?
So here’s the scoop: The HOA is for St Francis Wood’s HOA which maintains all the landscaping in addition to the tennis courts and playground that is for the exclusive use of this 525+ home community. With regard to Santa Paula, the buyer was in commercial real estate: shopping malls. Does anyone remember February of 2009? Possibly one of the worst momments to be in commercial real estate (unless of course you were in residential), the buyer lost a major tenant and pulled out of contract. This is a lovely home with tremendous curb appeal, it’s floorplan is awkward owning to it’s L shape, it feels dissasociated, lacking a core space, it’s remodel is less relevant now and last time it was on the market there was some deferred maintenance. SFW used to be a less expensive alternative than Sea Cliff or other A neighborhoods, if one was after square footage at a more affordable price, then ST Francis Wood was the place to go. The St Francis market has been hit hard as people take advantage of square footage in more sought after neighborhoods that is now discounted. The last deal over 4 million dollars in SFW was November of 2008 (Monterey) and that one was actually a bit of a fluke.
somaguy wrote:
Well, if this place sells at asking (approx. $460 per ft.^2), then perhaps that doesn’t bode well for the pocket listing they have over at Paragon Real Estate for a smaller five bedroom, six bathroom place on the same block: for 250 Santa Paula Avenue, they’re asking $2,995,000, or approx. $690 per ft.^2.
exactly my point. However: there is a big difference between a seller that has marketed their property multiple times and lowered the price and a seller that is not actively on the market and has not changed their price. The first is a seller, the second is a seller who has a property that is not for sale. These two properties are not comparable because one is for sale and the other is not.
Additionally, taking the dollars per sq ft on one of the largest homes in the city and applying it to other homes is not acurate valuation. Smaller homes usually have a higher dollar per sq ft versus larger ones because you have the same systems in a more concentrated space. I think unltimatley what this dollars per sq ft says about this particular home is that the SIZE of this home is not of particular value in this particular home at this particular time.
The buyer for something over 6000 sq feet is fairly rare, the buyer for something over 6000 sq ft in SFW is even more rare. The reality is: you can really only be in one room at a time and after about 4 or 5000 sq ft the buyer just sort of shrugs their shouldres and says “So What?”
When I looked at this place when it was first on the market my general impression was that: the living/entertaining areas were very, very nice; the bedrooms were somewhat cramped in relation to the living space; and a lot of sq ft was used up in guest quarters on the ground floor that was not finished well at all.